4 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Monday Night Raw (17 November - Results & Review)
2. Evans Gets Bouncy
Coming into Monday night, all eyes were on Je’Von Evans versus Gunther. Would the NXT sensation live up to the hype against The Ring General?
Perhaps the first sign things were going to work out well came when Gunther’s old entrance music hit, doing away with the def rebel dreck and harkening back to his no-frills, no-nonsense days.
Evans took umbrage with Gunther trying to “little bro” him in the early going, and he paid for it with a chop and a boot. But Je’Von hung around and started wowing the fans, winning them over by just being himself – a natural, sympathetic babyface. By the time Evans started flying around the ring and countering Gunther’s power game with his aerial flourishes, fans were already behind him.
The outcome – Gunther tapping Evans out with a sleeper – wasn’t much of a surprise, but this was the classic, “One man goes over, one man gets over” adage in action. Evans is a huge star on the rise. You almost got the feeling that they held back on this match quite a bit, as if they assumed that we will get Gunther/Evans II sometime in 2026, and they didn’t want to empty the tank here.